Where's the nurse? Staffs stretched too thin

As nursing shortages reach crisis proportions, both physicians and patients suffer the scarcity. Who will answer the call? The solution won't be easy.

By Stephanie Stapleton, AMNews staff. June 18, 2001.

Team Players
Physicians' interaction with allied health care professionals: Hiring allied health professionals to handle some of the routine well-patient visits, history-taking and routine test ordering is freeing doctors to, once again, practice medicine to the fullest of their abilities.

I have spent many afternoons with nurses crying on my shoulder, only to have them leave the next day. My day takes twice as long, without enough nurses to cover the procedures that a tech can't do. The nurses are so tired and overworked, you can see it in their bodies, their eyes, their attitude. It makes working at the hospital a dread.

These words are from a second-year family medicine resident at the University of California, Los Angeles. But her experiences are not uncommon.

Physicians are increasingly feeling the strain of hospital nursing staffs that are stretched too thin.

Although the nursing work force has always been cyclical -- reflecting ebbs and flows in the economy and the needs of the health care delivery system -- the present circumstance is considered by many to be different.

"On one hand, the current situation is a typical nursing shortage in that there are not enough nurses to fill all the positions out there," said Patricia Underwood, RN, PhD, first vice president of the American Nurses Assn. But this particular one is also more intense than those in the past, she said.

For starters, trends indicate that growing numbers of licensed registered nurses are opting not to work in the profession. About 494,000 RNs did not use their licenses last year. This number increased from 443,000 in 1996 and 387,000 in 1992, according to the Health Resources and Services Administration. In addition, the average age of those who stay is getting older. [...]